Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: from My Heart Radio. And I'm Kathleen Russo and I'm
Speaker 1: finally hosting Here's the Thing. Oh my goodness, Kathy, how
Speaker 1: long have you and I worked on this podcast. It's
Speaker 1: only been ten years, Alec, ten years. Well, of course
Speaker 1: you should have a turn hosting one of our staff
Speaker 1: pick shows from the archives this summer, but justice once, okay, Alec. Thanks.
Speaker 1: One of the perks of this job as the executive
Speaker 1: producer of Here's the Thing is you get to meet
Speaker 1: so many people you admire in respect, including people whose
Speaker 1: posters hung on your bedroom wall in Upstate New York
Speaker 1: during the nineties seventies, and people whose LPs you listen
Speaker 1: to on your turntable over and over so often the
Speaker 1: vinyl warped or war thinned. My archival picks today are
Speaker 1: two of these grades. Poet, writer, musician and the ultimate
Speaker 1: punk rocker Patty Smith and one of the best guitarists
Speaker 1: and vocalists in the world, rock legend Peter Frampton. Get
Speaker 1: these phone calls in quick succession. You'll number one and
Speaker 1: the charts. You know it's the biggest selling record of
Speaker 1: all time. You've just outsold Carol King's tapestry. We'll hear
Speaker 1: alex conversation with Peter Frampton in a bit, but first
Speaker 1: let's hear from music icon Patti Smith. Alex Conversation with
Speaker 1: Patti Smith was recorded live in two thousand sixteen at
Speaker 1: the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, New Jersey. When
Speaker 1: I called Patty's manager to book her on the show,
Speaker 1: I was surprised and frankly thrilled when Patty called me
Speaker 1: back herself to tell me she was a huge fan
Speaker 1: of Alex and of course she would be a guest.
Speaker 1: I love when we record live shows for the podcast
Speaker 1: because it brings a whole new energy and feel. As
Speaker 1: you'll hear, this was a love fest with the audience,
Speaker 1: and Patty, no stranger to live shows, was the perfect guest.
Speaker 1: Alex started by asking if she'd have the same career
Speaker 1: if she started out today. Actually, I have no idea
Speaker 1: because I didn't really come into the music business. I was.
Speaker 1: I came. I wound up in music by mistake. I'm
Speaker 1: not really a musician. I didn't really want to be
Speaker 1: a musician or a singer. I just wanted to I
Speaker 1: wanted to be a poet and a writer, and it
Speaker 1: was accidental. So would it accidentally happen now? I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I think I would have to be more
Speaker 1: focused on what I wanted. But also because I'm so
Speaker 1: on technological and things, I mean, I'm just not really
Speaker 1: suited for right now, So probably I would have to
Speaker 1: be like a physicist the band in the game. You
Speaker 1: don't even drive. No, I don't know how to drive,
Speaker 1: so I couldn't do that. That's true. She doesn't have
Speaker 1: a license. I said, you ever a live in l A.
Speaker 1: She said no, I don't swim and I don't drive.
Speaker 1: That's true. But if you came in now, you'd be
Speaker 1: a scientist. Who said, well, I I don't know what
Speaker 1: I would be, but I don't think I would have
Speaker 1: a problem no matter where I came in. You know,
Speaker 1: I would figure out something. I'm pretty scrappy now. But
Speaker 1: when you say that you weren't a musician, how did
Speaker 1: that begin for you? Well, I mean I came to
Speaker 1: New York in nineteen seven wanted to be an artist,
Speaker 1: and I also wrote poetry. And after I I just
Speaker 1: started writing more poetry. And then uh was shepherded by
Speaker 1: people like Alan Ginsburg and and William Burrows and Gregory Corso,
Speaker 1: and they all read their poetry. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: read poetry, but I didn't want to be boring because
Speaker 1: I went to a lot of poetry readings and they
Speaker 1: were snoresville, you know, they were like, sorry, but really boring.
Speaker 1: So I just started like, at least have good wine. Wine.
Speaker 1: I didn't even drink, and I don't anything interesting really,
Speaker 1: but I mean, I'll have a shot at to kill everybody. No,
Speaker 1: I mean no, I never had a drug problem. M
Speaker 1: minutes on that I have a drug problem now. Actually,
Speaker 1: I was such a sickly kid um that and my
Speaker 1: parents worked so hard to keep me alive that you know,
Speaker 1: when I when I came out into the world, the
Speaker 1: last thing I was going to do is fuck that up.
Speaker 1: You know, I just I'm not. I don't have a
Speaker 1: self destructive event. But also when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: my mother was a chain smoker, and she I mean
Speaker 1: real true chain smoker, and when she ran out of
Speaker 1: cigarettes and she didn't have money, she would pace all
Speaker 1: night long. I get up at midnight and see my
Speaker 1: poor mom pacing because she didn't have a cigarette. And
Speaker 1: I thought then I'm never gonna be dependent on anything,
Speaker 1: because I thought, what would happen if you got stranded
Speaker 1: on a desert island you didn't have cigarettes, You'd like
Speaker 1: fall apart. So it was like an early lesson in uh,
Speaker 1: what I didn't want facing on a desert cigarettes have
Speaker 1: to grow to back and then But I feel like
Speaker 1: somehow I didn't answer one of some questions. Oh, I know,
Speaker 1: because you're yeah, it doesn't matter. You do whatever you
Speaker 1: want to do. How I wound up singing, I just
Speaker 1: wound up singing, like to make up little singing, little
Speaker 1: songs acapella between poems to make it a little more interesting,
Speaker 1: and then sort of wrapping poems. And it was just
Speaker 1: organic from somebody just did it on your own. You
Speaker 1: didn't see anybody else doing that, No, I mean I
Speaker 1: saw like beat poets or I mean just I think
Speaker 1: of everybody that I was influenced by at that time
Speaker 1: of my life, Johnny Carson was the one. I just thought, like,
Speaker 1: you didn't have drug problem either. Yeah, I'm not surprised,
Speaker 1: but I mean, but just the fact that Johnny Carson,
Speaker 1: his his his ability to improvise or to get himself
Speaker 1: out of any situation. That was always what I was
Speaker 1: looking for. If I was on stage, gotten a bad situation,
Speaker 1: find my way out of it. You grew up in
Speaker 1: South Jersey, and you're kind of tough. The way you
Speaker 1: grew up. Your dad. What did your dad do for
Speaker 1: a living? He was worked in a factory. She's waitress.
Speaker 1: And how many kids in your family? Three girls, one boy?
Speaker 1: And I was the oldest, oldest, And it was tough.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean it was financially tough. We had.
Speaker 1: It was in those ways very tough. But in another
Speaker 1: way we had it was very magical because I had
Speaker 1: really great siblings. I had a great imagination, read hundreds
Speaker 1: of books. My parents. We knew that they had a
Speaker 1: lot of strife and stress, but you know, it was
Speaker 1: just the world seems so magical. It wasn't so bad
Speaker 1: for us. Books were my salvation, and so I I
Speaker 1: didn't think of things. The only bad thing was when
Speaker 1: I'd be hungry. I mean, truthfully, I like to eat.
Speaker 1: I was really skinny and a real I was always hungry,
Speaker 1: and that was my big Yeah, really skinny. And then
Speaker 1: when you left home, where'd you go? New York? I
Speaker 1: left when I was twenty and Basically I left to
Speaker 1: get a job because in uh South Jersey and Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: the New York shipyard closed down and there were like
Speaker 1: thirty thousand jobs overnight were lost and there wasn't any work,
Speaker 1: no matter how low a factory job, nothing, And there
Speaker 1: was no more work, and I needed a job. So
Speaker 1: I went to New York City to get a job.
Speaker 1: And where'd you get a job? Um? In a bookstore.
Speaker 1: I got a series of bookstores until I really landed
Speaker 1: a great bookstore job in Scribner's Bookstore, and I worked
Speaker 1: there for about five years. Doesn't it really tells a
Speaker 1: lot about you? That really pretty much sums it up?
Speaker 1: Your home in Jersey, you can't get a job, you're starving.
Speaker 1: You going to New York to get a job. I
Speaker 1: thought you were gonna say in a restaurant, Well, no idea,
Speaker 1: it soon as you go to a bookstore a different
Speaker 1: kind of food. But no, you know what happened. My
Speaker 1: mother was a waitress and she tried to give me
Speaker 1: a job at her counter, but I was so clumsy
Speaker 1: and such a day dreamer, and she fired me. And
Speaker 1: so then she was upset that I was leaving home,
Speaker 1: but she got she let me take my white uniform
Speaker 1: and my wedgies. So the first day I got I'm
Speaker 1: one Time Square and of course Time Square was all
Speaker 1: different than you know. And uh, I got a little
Speaker 1: a job immediately because they needed a waitress at a place,
Speaker 1: a little Italian place called Joe's Um on Times Square.
Speaker 1: And within like two hours I dumped one of the
Speaker 1: I had a giant tray as tripped and the whole
Speaker 1: tray of veal parmisanas went on this woman's tweed suit.
Speaker 1: Not only was I fired, but my three hours pay
Speaker 1: went to her cleaning bill. So I went back to
Speaker 1: port authority, left the waitress uniform and the wedgies in
Speaker 1: the girl's bathroom and thought maybe somebody can use them
Speaker 1: and h Then I looked around for a better job.
Speaker 1: How does art, poetry, music come into your life when
Speaker 1: you're in New York when you're twenty years old. Well,
Speaker 1: first it was just getting a job. I didn't get
Speaker 1: a job the first or second day. I mean I
Speaker 1: was sleeping in the subway, sleeping in uh Central Park,
Speaker 1: sleeping at the cemetery and Flushing or Greenwood or wherever
Speaker 1: it was, and near where Herman Melville was buried, and uh,
Speaker 1: it took a little while, and truthfully, it wasn't really
Speaker 1: until I met I met Robert Maplethorpe, and uh we
Speaker 1: met a couple of times. But I was in a
Speaker 1: bit of a jam because a grown up asked me
Speaker 1: to go out to eat. He was probably forty, but
Speaker 1: I was like twenty. To me, seemed like, you know,
Speaker 1: he was a grown up, you know, And uh, I
Speaker 1: was really afraid that my mother used to say, don't
Speaker 1: go out with a stranger because you know, they just
Speaker 1: want one thing. And I thought, I was so hungry,
Speaker 1: and he said he would take me to dinner. And
Speaker 1: he took me to the Empire State Building diner, and
Speaker 1: I remembered to this day he ordered, uh we ordered.
Speaker 1: He ordered me swordfish and it was five dollars, and
Speaker 1: I thought he's going to want everything for five dollars.
Speaker 1: And I was petrified, and so I I ate that
Speaker 1: I couldn't even eat it. And I'm so angry, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna eat. Maybe I should leave now, Yeah, exactly, not
Speaker 1: that door. But these potatoes are so good of just
Speaker 1: a couple of more potatoes that I'm going to write
Speaker 1: out that door. He'll never know. No, I didn't know
Speaker 1: what to do. Then when we walked, no, we didn't.
Speaker 1: We didn't have any dessert. We walked all the way
Speaker 1: down to uh Tompkins Square Park and we were sitting
Speaker 1: there and then all of a sudden, he said, I
Speaker 1: have an apartment right around here. Would and he asked
Speaker 1: me if I wanted to. It was really creepy. He
Speaker 1: actually had like it's like like a turtleneck, a white turtleneck,
Speaker 1: I remember, and a medallion. I mean, it was really powers.
Speaker 1: That's so funny. Now he was supposed to be a
Speaker 1: science fiction writer, but I was. And when he said that,
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my god, this is the moment, you know,
Speaker 1: and everything my mother ever told me for like ten
Speaker 1: years of my life. And I was sitting there paralyzed,
Speaker 1: figuring out what to do. And I looked and I
Speaker 1: see Robert Maplethorpe coming, you know, up through it just coming.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a cloud parted and here he comes
Speaker 1: with like long curly hair and a sheepskin vest and
Speaker 1: you know, and his dungarees. And I had only met
Speaker 1: him once or twice, and I didn't even know his name,
Speaker 1: and I just met him sort of, And so I
Speaker 1: ran up to him, and I said, uh, do you
Speaker 1: remember me? And he goes yeah, And I said, will
Speaker 1: you pretend you're my boyfriend? And he says okay. So
Speaker 1: I bring him to the science fiction guy and I said,
Speaker 1: this is my boyfriend. He's really mad. I gotta go goodbye.
Speaker 1: And then I said to Robert, this is so stupid,
Speaker 1: but I didn't. I said run, and Robert and I ran.
Speaker 1: We ran, we ran, we ran away. And uh and
Speaker 1: now the guy on the turtleneck with the medallion on
Speaker 1: is the president elect of the United States. Boy, did
Speaker 1: you play your cards wrong? You know? And then my
Speaker 1: life began. Life began that night because Robert and I
Speaker 1: just roamed around. We roamed around the East Village and
Speaker 1: everywhere all night long till two in the morning, just
Speaker 1: talking away. And finally, almost simultaneously, we both said, do
Speaker 1: you have a place to stay? Neither one of us
Speaker 1: had anywhere to live, We didn't have any money, but
Speaker 1: the differences. Robert had knew some kids of Pratt and
Speaker 1: he knew he knew how to get the key to
Speaker 1: this one guy's apartment where his art was stored. So
Speaker 1: we went there and we went to his place and
Speaker 1: he showed me all his drawings and what he was doing,
Speaker 1: and after that night we became inseparable, and that set us,
Speaker 1: at least me on a path, you know where of
Speaker 1: drawling and painting and evolving and writing poetry. And yeah,
Speaker 1: we've we've yes through through many things. Yeah, well I
Speaker 1: was going to get into that. But you're with him
Speaker 1: for a long long time, and then things change for
Speaker 1: you as well in terms of your career. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean at first. I mean, the thing is is that
Speaker 1: I never cared about a career. I have to say,
Speaker 1: none of those things, um being in a business, music, business, career, money.
Speaker 1: What what I always wanted, no matter how conceded it sounds,
Speaker 1: is I wanted to do something great. I wanted to
Speaker 1: write something as great as Pinocchio or The Scarlet Letter,
Speaker 1: or you know, just do something wonderful, write a wonderful book.
Speaker 1: I didn't really care about and still don't. I don't
Speaker 1: care about having a career or any of that stuff.
Speaker 1: I do my work and in the process I've had
Speaker 1: some great successes. I've had things that have had me
Speaker 1: banned from the world. I've had you know, I've I've
Speaker 1: been in trouble, I've done you know, I've left it
Speaker 1: all behind. It's not important to me. It's always important
Speaker 1: to me. Is really just to do something good, to
Speaker 1: do something that's uh duran Patti Smith talking about her
Speaker 1: relationship with the artist Robert Maplethorpe. If you're enjoying this
Speaker 1: show from our archives, did you know we have over
Speaker 1: two and fifty more available for your listening pleasure. Be
Speaker 1: sure to check them out and Here's the Thing dot Org.
Speaker 1: After the break, Alec and Patti Smith talked about her
Speaker 1: marriage to mc fives bred Sonic Smith, and motherhood. I'm
Speaker 1: Kathleen Rousseau and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Let's
Speaker 1: get back to Alex's conversation with Patti Smith and what
Speaker 1: her career really means to her. So when you started
Speaker 1: to have success, was that something that was because it
Speaker 1: was so unfamiliar to you? There are those people who
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say the word failure. They're more
Speaker 1: comfortable and anonymity than they are being successful and famous
Speaker 1: because it's familiar. Did you find that when you were
Speaker 1: becoming famous as a musician, because primarily you became famous
Speaker 1: as a musician as well. At first in the beginning,
Speaker 1: I had my first big success with this song I
Speaker 1: wrote with Bruce Springsteen because the night I thought it
Speaker 1: was thank you, I thought it was I thought it
Speaker 1: was exciting to have a song on the radio. I
Speaker 1: didn't think of it in terms of success or failure.
Speaker 1: It was just really cool to be on the radio.
Speaker 1: And back then, you know, having a single and meant,
Speaker 1: you know, your kurds were in the window and and
Speaker 1: you could, you know, you played bigger places and met
Speaker 1: more people. But by nine seventy nine, truthfully, I could
Speaker 1: see that success was to keep going. You I was
Speaker 1: doing less work, less meaningful work, evolving less as a
Speaker 1: person and an artist, and just get more successful. And
Speaker 1: I thought, that's that's not why I was put on
Speaker 1: the planet. I wasn't put on the planet to you know,
Speaker 1: climb the ladder of success. I was here to do
Speaker 1: certain kind of work. And so um I left. I
Speaker 1: left the music business in seventy nine. You separated from
Speaker 1: Maple Well. Robert and I separated as a couple in
Speaker 1: like seventy two, but never as we were just the same,
Speaker 1: only we weren't, you know, doing it anymore, you know,
Speaker 1: But we didn't change how we were. We were always
Speaker 1: just the same. We were just you know, had different
Speaker 1: physical partners. So we never quite really separated and were
Speaker 1: with him and still connected him even when he was
Speaker 1: very second, when he was and when he died. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we you know, I'm still connected with him.
Speaker 1: I still think about him every day, and the things
Speaker 1: that I learned from him or that we we did
Speaker 1: together inform the work that I do. I mean, we
Speaker 1: we bonded so young through art. I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, we were boyfriend and girlfriend. We did all
Speaker 1: the things young people do. But I think that is
Speaker 1: as he felt freer and freer as an artist in
Speaker 1: a human being his nature. First he had to come
Speaker 1: out as an artist. Then the next thing that happened
Speaker 1: is he blossomed and felt his sexual nature. We had
Speaker 1: to weather that. We had to, you know, try to
Speaker 1: navigate what this meant, what it meant to our relationship,
Speaker 1: what it meant and and it was difficult, and it
Speaker 1: took a few years because neither one of us wanted
Speaker 1: to part, But eventually we had to part as boyfriend
Speaker 1: and girlfriend because he had to be who he needed
Speaker 1: to be. When did you meet your husband, you eventually
Speaker 1: got married. I met my husband in nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: in Detroit, and I was on the road and I
Speaker 1: met him in Detroit and I saw him. It was
Speaker 1: it's like a it's really like a song. I saw
Speaker 1: him across a crowded room. He was just standing there
Speaker 1: and it blew overcoat. I didn't know who he was,
Speaker 1: and I thought, that's the boy I'm going to marry.
Speaker 1: I swear to you that's true. How old were you
Speaker 1: at the time. I was about seventy six. I was
Speaker 1: about twenty eight. I don't know. Did you walk up
Speaker 1: and tell him that right? No, no, not at all.
Speaker 1: But Lenny Kay actually introduced us and he said, Fred Smith,
Speaker 1: Patti Smith. We just looked at each other and I
Speaker 1: don't know, and we finally, Um, we had a long
Speaker 1: distance relationship, in fact, because the night we had a
Speaker 1: long distant relationship and neither one of us had a
Speaker 1: whole lot of money, and to make phone calls was expensive,
Speaker 1: long distance calls. I always to this day I hear
Speaker 1: people my boyfriend only called me three times today, and
Speaker 1: I think, Jesus, you know, it's like I'd have to
Speaker 1: wait all week to get one phone call from from
Speaker 1: Fred And um, actually, am I going off the course too,
Speaker 1: there is no core, is no course. Yeah, you're my
Speaker 1: kind of guy. I'm your kind of passage. I'm your
Speaker 1: kind of passenger too, because the autopilot about thirty minutes ago. Now,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm we're not going anywhere in particular because
Speaker 1: I don't know how to drive and I have no
Speaker 1: sense of direction. I'm a really good passenger because I
Speaker 1: can never tell if anybody's lost, you know, And I
Speaker 1: apply that to all every part of life. But when
Speaker 1: you met your husband, and what did he do? Was
Speaker 1: he a musician? He's a He was a musician, He
Speaker 1: played with the MC five. He was a master guitarist.
Speaker 1: He was really one of our great guitarist and h
Speaker 1: and he's just such a beautiful man. You know. We
Speaker 1: just decided, you know, we we wanted to evolve as
Speaker 1: human beings, and he wanted children, and we just we
Speaker 1: just decided to withdraw from public life and really know
Speaker 1: each other and when when we had children, they would
Speaker 1: really know who we were. And and so we did.
Speaker 1: How long until his he passed away in the end
Speaker 1: of ninety four, so sixteen years, sixteen years? What was
Speaker 1: it like did you paint? I know, I didn't paint
Speaker 1: because um it was just the way our living quarters were.
Speaker 1: I didn't really have the space to do something like that,
Speaker 1: but I wrote every day. I could have never written
Speaker 1: just kids or the books that I'm writing now, had
Speaker 1: I not had sixteen years of enforced discipline, because I've
Speaker 1: always been very undisciplined. And then unless I had a
Speaker 1: job or something. But then having a children, um I had.
Speaker 1: I had to learn to wake up at five in
Speaker 1: the morning and from five to eight was my writing time.
Speaker 1: Everybody was asleep, it was my time. And it was
Speaker 1: really hard at first, but then after a while I
Speaker 1: got in a groove and I still right early in
Speaker 1: the morning, and I really learned how to develop my craft.
Speaker 1: And uh, it was hard because there's no cafes around,
Speaker 1: there was no bookstores, a lot of things. The biggest,
Speaker 1: the most hardest thing is in New York, you can
Speaker 1: walk out the door and get a cup of coffee
Speaker 1: in about two minutes practically anywhere, but where I was,
Speaker 1: the closest thing was seven eleven, which was about, you know,
Speaker 1: half a mile away, so I'd have to every Saturday,
Speaker 1: I'd walked to seven eleven, my cafe, get a glazed donut,
Speaker 1: and the coffee, and I was I was in town,
Speaker 1: you know. But but I love my life. It wasn't
Speaker 1: easy because you know, I had to do all the
Speaker 1: we we did everything. We didn't have nannie's or housekeepers
Speaker 1: or even babysitters. We did everything. And I'm not the
Speaker 1: most adept at stuff. You know, some of my poor kids,
Speaker 1: you know, their school uniforms and stuff. My daughter's little pleaded,
Speaker 1: you know, jumper was like always a little jagged e
Speaker 1: and their blouses in their shirts were a little dingier
Speaker 1: than the other because I didn't like using bleach and
Speaker 1: things like that. But but I I love my kids,
Speaker 1: I love my husband, you know. And it was a
Speaker 1: lot of certain amount of sacrifice and and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: but I was talking about you because I just find
Speaker 1: this so interesting that was there much talk about you,
Speaker 1: like getting back, getting back in there and getting back
Speaker 1: into your life to make money as a breadwinner for
Speaker 1: everybody's been well, when we really really need I always
Speaker 1: always feel like I got to work all the time. Well,
Speaker 1: when we really needed money, we lived so simply. I
Speaker 1: mean when we really needed money. In eighty six, we
Speaker 1: did one record together and that kept us going. And
Speaker 1: but it's just you know, I um, I I liked
Speaker 1: my life. I never I didn't expect to be on
Speaker 1: the great Stages of Europe, you know. To me, it
Speaker 1: was really fantastic that I got the opportunity. I never
Speaker 1: thought I would do a record, but in doing so,
Speaker 1: I got to travel, which in I never thought I
Speaker 1: would ever have the money to travel and go to Finland,
Speaker 1: you know. But uh, but I mean all the places.
Speaker 1: I'm just joking, but I did get to go to Finland,
Speaker 1: even though I had never dreamed of going to Finland.
Speaker 1: But I mean I got to all the places. I
Speaker 1: saw Paris and Rome and Vienna and all these places
Speaker 1: because I had a band and sang and did records.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't it wasn't my focus in life. It
Speaker 1: wasn't my great great vision. And so when I didn't
Speaker 1: do it, I was grateful that I got the opportunity.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't mourning the situation that I wasn't doing it.
Speaker 1: You know, I wasn't missing the applause. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: a Judy Garland movie or something. I just you know,
Speaker 1: I felt you know, really happy righting, you know, watching
Speaker 1: my kids grow. I did what I needed to do.
Speaker 1: I was happy. But you have the experience to be
Speaker 1: a mother. Oh yeah, I love My kids are awesome.
Speaker 1: And the funny thing is, I mean, I'm not embarrassed
Speaker 1: to say this because my kids know. I never wanted kids.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be an artist. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to have kids. And I came from a big family
Speaker 1: and I helped raise my siblings, and I just wanted
Speaker 1: to be free. And it was Fred who wanted children,
Speaker 1: and I loved him so much, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I can do that, you know I But I never
Speaker 1: expected to just love my kids so much and just
Speaker 1: love being a mother. And since Fred died when he
Speaker 1: was forty five, you know, I have them. I have them.
Speaker 1: I see so much of him in them, not just
Speaker 1: in the way they look or certain gestures, but even
Speaker 1: in their music. The tones of my son's guitar. He'll
Speaker 1: be playing a guitar solo. He never heard his father
Speaker 1: play guitar because they were quite young. It's Fred's tones.
Speaker 1: Jesse at the piano, she is just his feel. Was
Speaker 1: writing songs difficult and kind of laborious? Did they come
Speaker 1: to you? Were both? Well? I I mean, writing songs
Speaker 1: isn't my first vocation, and I I it's I'm not
Speaker 1: as fastile at writing songs as other things. Also since
Speaker 1: I don't really only I play a few chords on
Speaker 1: the guitar, so I can figure out some things. But
Speaker 1: sometimes songs come. Songs are so strange. Sometimes they just
Speaker 1: come as a gift. I've woke up in the morning
Speaker 1: and there's a song there and I quick write it down.
Speaker 1: It just comes full with the music and the words.
Speaker 1: And then there's other songs that have taken three years too,
Speaker 1: you know, have a piece of music and write words,
Speaker 1: but it's it's labor songwriting, and there's a lot of responsibility,
Speaker 1: um responsibility to the composer because most of my songs,
Speaker 1: the music was written by a band member or Fred
Speaker 1: and uh and and so you want to please them.
Speaker 1: But it also has to be something that I can sing.
Speaker 1: But the easiest, one of the easiest things was to
Speaker 1: write UM too because the night because Bruce, I had
Speaker 1: a cassette with a it was a demo, and I
Speaker 1: really didn't want to listen to it. You know. It
Speaker 1: was given to me by my producer, Jimmy Ivan, and
Speaker 1: he coax Bruce into let me finish it. Bruce couldn't
Speaker 1: figure out he was having trouble writing verses to the song.
Speaker 1: He had the chorus, and Jimmy gave it to me,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to listen to it because I thought, um,
Speaker 1: I wanted to write. I wanted my band to write
Speaker 1: their own songs. And uh. And Bruce is from like
Speaker 1: a different part of New Jersey than me, and he's
Speaker 1: sort of in the middle, and I'm from South Jersey
Speaker 1: and it's like, I really, I just didn't want, you know,
Speaker 1: and sort of a middle pollute your song in which
Speaker 1: SAPs don't bring that middle Jersey. I know, I'm from
Speaker 1: New Jersey, it's just I'm from like the cooler part
Speaker 1: of Jersey. But I was That's what I was saying before.
Speaker 1: But one night I was waiting. Jimmy had given me
Speaker 1: this tape when we were doing this album Easter, and
Speaker 1: every night Jimmy would say, hey, listen to the tape,
Speaker 1: to listen to the tape, to listen to the tape,
Speaker 1: and I said, uh, not yet, and he called me
Speaker 1: up to listen to the tape, to listen to the tape.
Speaker 1: Uh not yet. So you know, it was just sitting
Speaker 1: there in my little apartment on McDougall Street. And uh so, anyway,
Speaker 1: Fred was supposed to call me, and it was like
Speaker 1: seven and I got already. I look cool, and I'm
Speaker 1: sitting there and the phone sitting there, and I'm waiting
Speaker 1: for Fred to call. And seven goes by seven thirty.
Speaker 1: No Fred, you know, say eight o'clock. I'm pacing around,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was like obsessive, you know, I wanted,
Speaker 1: you know, the phone call, and I couldn't. I was
Speaker 1: just pasting and pacing, couldn't figure out what to do
Speaker 1: with myself. And I noticed this the darn tape, and
Speaker 1: I thought, listen to that darn tape. So I put
Speaker 1: it on my cassette machine and put it on and
Speaker 1: I listened to it, and it's in my key, perfectly
Speaker 1: arranged anthemic has a really great chorus, and I thought
Speaker 1: it's one of those darn hits. It's just you know, yeah.
Speaker 1: So I listened to it and it was, you know,
Speaker 1: it was captivating, and I'm waiting for Fred and waiting
Speaker 1: for Fred. Finally he calls me up like eleven o'clock
Speaker 1: at night. But when he called me, because it took
Speaker 1: so long, um, I had finished all the lyrics to
Speaker 1: the song and uh. That's why in the second verse
Speaker 1: that says, Lisie have idell when I'm alone, love is
Speaker 1: a ring the telephone. I was waiting for Fred to
Speaker 1: call so and uh, so I wrote the words and
Speaker 1: uh and and thanks to Bruce, I had my my
Speaker 1: first hit. Alex spoke with Patti Smith before a live
Speaker 1: audience in two thousand sixteen. Now to one of my
Speaker 1: most heartfelt teenage crushes, Peter Frampton. He arrived early at
Speaker 1: the studio in two thousand twelve and I had the
Speaker 1: privilege to sit down and talk with him before his
Speaker 1: conversation with Alec. He was so down to earth and friendly,
Speaker 1: and mostly we talked about his children. Both Alec and
Speaker 1: I are huge fans, so we were so looking forward
Speaker 1: to this interview, which began with Peter's obsession with sound.
Speaker 1: Sound is very inspirational to me. I remember the reason
Speaker 1: that I wanted to learn guitar was because I heard
Speaker 1: the sounds of all these people on TV and on
Speaker 1: the radio electric guitar very young and something. I have
Speaker 1: a very acute sense of sound, and I've always had
Speaker 1: that if I don't have a good sound, I can't
Speaker 1: play very well, so I've always worked out what makes
Speaker 1: a good sound? How do you get a good sound technically?
Speaker 1: And then one of the first sessions I ever did,
Speaker 1: Bill Wyman of The Stones produced it when I was fourteen,
Speaker 1: and the first engineer I worked with was Glynn Jones,
Speaker 1: who is if people don't know, he's one of the
Speaker 1: most famous engineers of all Stones engineer, Yeah, Zapp and
Speaker 1: Eagles that the band everybody yea humble by and then
Speaker 1: being a gadget freak early on, I just was over
Speaker 1: like a little birdie on their shoulder and I was,
Speaker 1: what's that? What are you doing there? I just learned
Speaker 1: how to engineer, So I really enjoy that part of
Speaker 1: it as well, immensely. How do you end up as
Speaker 1: a fourteen year old and Wyman wants to produce your
Speaker 1: I started playing guitar just before I was eight years old,
Speaker 1: and we're either your parents musical yes, um in England, Yes,
Speaker 1: about twelve miles south of London and Bromley, Kent, and
Speaker 1: my mother was definitely would have been an entertainer. She was,
Speaker 1: but my grandparents wouldn't allow her to become an actress.
Speaker 1: She wanted to be an actress. Her father was a singer. Yes,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of musical jeans. And dad, my
Speaker 1: dad played his teacher artist. He played guitar in a
Speaker 1: college dance band before the war, before he was more
Speaker 1: into his art, but he did. He was the one
Speaker 1: that taught me how to sing Michael Rowe the boat,
Speaker 1: you know, with two chords basically and then hang down
Speaker 1: your head. Tom Dooley was another big effort. Then it
Speaker 1: was Eddie Cochrane, Buddy Holly and our English the Shadows,
Speaker 1: Cliff Richard and the Shadows. So that's how I started
Speaker 1: playing guitar because of American music. Obviously, that's what we
Speaker 1: all did, and we were all clamoring for American music
Speaker 1: before the Beatles and then so I was known in
Speaker 1: locally as this young, little upstart, good guitar player, very young.
Speaker 1: Ended up in a semipro band still at school that
Speaker 1: had the drummer that was the original drummer of the
Speaker 1: Rolling Stones called Tony Chapman, who introduced Bill to the
Speaker 1: Stones that he didn't end up staying in the Stones,
Speaker 1: and Bill felt he owed him a a favor. I
Speaker 1: would say said, look, put a band together and I'll
Speaker 1: produce it. And he comes into the music shop. I'm
Speaker 1: working on the saturdays when I'm about fourteen and restringing
Speaker 1: guitars for the guy there. He said, I want you
Speaker 1: to be in my band, you know. I said, well,
Speaker 1: I have to speak to dad, you know sort of thing.
Speaker 1: The first thing I know, we're in a van. We
Speaker 1: pick up Bill Wyman and Penge who sits in the front.
Speaker 1: The van goes very quiet. We've got a rolling stone
Speaker 1: in the front seat. We go up to London and
Speaker 1: I meet Glenn John's and we make a record like
Speaker 1: everyone is talking about soul, did or you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Record? It was called A Hole in My
Speaker 1: Soul and it was a cover of an American song
Speaker 1: and what was the name of the band, The Preachers.
Speaker 1: So that was it, and so music was your entire life. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're in the guitar shop and Kent, Yeah, fixing strings
Speaker 1: on guitars from people shining guitars, And the next thing
Speaker 1: you know, build my mean's in the car and you're
Speaker 1: off to go and do hold my soul at the Preachers. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean like you woked around us so much. Fiddle,
Speaker 1: what year is this? This is sixty four? So the
Speaker 1: stones were and the Beatles were in full swing by then. Yes,
Speaker 1: we did. That year the Stones were given Ready Steady Go.
Speaker 1: They took over the show Ready Steady Go for one week,
Speaker 1: and each one of the Stones had their choice of
Speaker 1: act to be on, you know, and of course Bill
Speaker 1: chose us. So I'm on TV when I'm just before
Speaker 1: I'm i turned fifteen? Is there If anybody's got it,
Speaker 1: Bill's got it because he's he's the historian, you know.
Speaker 1: But that was pretty amazing. Do you miss living in England?
Speaker 1: You're such an American in so many ways. You lived
Speaker 1: here for years. Han two years seventy seventy five, I
Speaker 1: came to New York. Actually I missed my family, my
Speaker 1: brother and his family. I miss friends and stuff, but
Speaker 1: my children are here. When I first came to America
Speaker 1: with Humble Pie and I turned on the radio, I said,
Speaker 1: I'm moving here, it just seemed like this was the place.
Speaker 1: It was all happening with the old and this is
Speaker 1: the yeah. And I'd lived through the swinging sixties of London,
Speaker 1: you know, and that was exciting too. And I love England,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, I just don't think I would
Speaker 1: ever live there again. I was just i'd be too
Speaker 1: far from my kids. Yeah, so when you finish the
Speaker 1: Hole in my soul on the show with Bill Wyman,
Speaker 1: he's your selection there on the show. What happens then? Then, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm sixteen. It's school holidays in the summer of big
Speaker 1: local band The Herd come to me and say, we
Speaker 1: saw you in the breaches and we're having a change around.
Speaker 1: Would you come and and help us out for the summer?
Speaker 1: So I said, okay. So it gets close to September
Speaker 1: when I'm going to go back to school, and they said,
Speaker 1: here's an offer. We want you to be the lead
Speaker 1: guitarist and the lead guitarist going to play bass, and
Speaker 1: we want to be a four piece out of five piece,
Speaker 1: and would you join the Herd? I said, oh, I
Speaker 1: had to hear. I've got to go back to school,
Speaker 1: do my sixth form, get my A levels and go
Speaker 1: to Guildhall School and the music That was my plan
Speaker 1: to go to music college, you know Beard right at
Speaker 1: least Yeah, I haven't even had a shandy yet, you know.
Speaker 1: So I went to Dad and Mom and I said, look,
Speaker 1: I really want to do. This is a professional band.
Speaker 1: You know, they're great, They're a big band, and my
Speaker 1: dad said, well, and they knew that this was on
Speaker 1: the cards, you know, this was coming up that they
Speaker 1: knew by this time I was going to be a musician.
Speaker 1: And so he said, well, look, if you left here
Speaker 1: and you've got a job at the post office, you
Speaker 1: get fifteen pounds a week. I want to get an
Speaker 1: assurance from this band that you're going to get fifteen
Speaker 1: pounds of week. I said, well, if he can do
Speaker 1: that deal, that that'll be great. I don't think they
Speaker 1: earn enough to pay themselves sifting both. He said, well
Speaker 1: that's what you I'm going minimum wage for you. So
Speaker 1: that was the last deal my dad did for me,
Speaker 1: because we started to become a little better and earn
Speaker 1: more money. Beginning, they couldn't pay themselves fifty. Eventually it
Speaker 1: was a bargain, yeah, because they paid me fifteen. They
Speaker 1: got upstein. So that was the end of him as
Speaker 1: a manager. Everything changed and the Herd became had like
Speaker 1: three big top ten hits and and I became very
Speaker 1: well known in Europe as a guitar player singer. Now
Speaker 1: by the time you leave the Herd, you leave them
Speaker 1: in what year the herd after the the these three
Speaker 1: big hits and an album. We realized that we were
Speaker 1: losing money still and there was no reason because we
Speaker 1: saw the figures what was coming in and what we
Speaker 1: were getting paid and all that. So we reached out
Speaker 1: and Steve Merritt and Ronnie Lane of the Small Faces said, look,
Speaker 1: we've been through this. We've been screwed, you know, by
Speaker 1: management or business manager or whatever. They clued us in,
Speaker 1: which was very nice to them, and said they help
Speaker 1: us produce a track or two on on the next
Speaker 1: album we were going to do, which they did. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in with the Small Faces now at various
Speaker 1: functions and and wanted to join the Small Faces. That
Speaker 1: wasn't to be. Steve wanted me to join the Small Faces,
Speaker 1: but they weren't so thrilled with that. So in the
Speaker 1: end Steve called me up and said, look, I've left
Speaker 1: the Small Faces, let's form a band. And that's how
Speaker 1: Humble Pie basically formed in right at the end of in.
Speaker 1: So you with Humble Pie and you're in England, yes,
Speaker 1: and you perform with them for how many years? Four years?
Speaker 1: So how would you characterize that period for stuff? Did
Speaker 1: you enjoy it? Unbelievable? They were very popular. Yes in
Speaker 1: the States as well. Yes, that band brought me to America.
Speaker 1: That's where we started when I met I mean probably
Speaker 1: one of the first gigs I met Bill Graham. You know,
Speaker 1: you realized now when I look back, it was the
Speaker 1: beginnings of the creation of rock and roll shows. Truly.
Speaker 1: Bill Graham was the guy on how to do it live?
Speaker 1: And why did Humble Pie? And a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: I was feeling claustrophobic in the band because we started
Speaker 1: off very democratic and doing it all different types of music,
Speaker 1: and now our our stage act was narrowing, and we
Speaker 1: were just doing more more of that heavy rock and roll,
Speaker 1: which I love, Don't get me wrong. That's my riff,
Speaker 1: I Don't need no Doctor. That's me jamming the sound
Speaker 1: check in Madison Square Garden, and Steve just jumped up
Speaker 1: on the stage and started singing, I Don't need no
Speaker 1: Doctor over that riff. He and I were very much singing. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's the one that says it's been a gas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we go home on Mond on Monday. But what I'm
Speaker 1: tell's the oh, he was probably a couple of years old,
Speaker 1: and you feel claustrophobic, white because we want. I wasn't
Speaker 1: being able to do the music, all of this music
Speaker 1: that I wanted to do. Humble Pie started off really
Speaker 1: split between acoustic and electric. And also I was coming
Speaker 1: into my own and Steve and I fought like brothers. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's which, which is why humble Pie was so fiery.
Speaker 1: I think because musically it was phenomenal. You know, sometimes
Speaker 1: we degree and sometimes we just wouldn't agree. It was
Speaker 1: very sad for me because I knew it would upset them,
Speaker 1: but I just felt that I had to. It was
Speaker 1: time to go on. And did you know where you
Speaker 1: wanted to go? No idea. I knew that I was.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to form another band. I wanted to
Speaker 1: become a solo artist. Why because I wanted to make
Speaker 1: all the decisions because I'm a complete control freak. Did
Speaker 1: you feel you wanted Yeah, you wanted wanted to try
Speaker 1: things that Yeah, I wanted to try things that maybe
Speaker 1: other people wouldn't want to try. You know, I wanted
Speaker 1: to do it. And I have to say that it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been I wouldn't have had a solo career
Speaker 1: had it not been for Humble Pie. I learned so
Speaker 1: much from working with Steve Marriott. I have to hand
Speaker 1: him a lot of the credit for the sort of
Speaker 1: things that he introduced me to listen to as well,
Speaker 1: music blues and Build Black Bow and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That was really influential to me. So that's why it
Speaker 1: was a bitter sweet thing leaving. I wanted to leave,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to leave. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: as soon as I left the live album that I
Speaker 1: had a big hand in mixing, because I'm the gadget
Speaker 1: freak in the engineer with Eddie Kramer rock in the
Speaker 1: film or Comes Out, I've left right at that point
Speaker 1: and it zooms up the charts. It's Humble Pie's first
Speaker 1: gold record, and I'm going, holy crap, that's it. It's
Speaker 1: the first big blooper of my career. You know, I
Speaker 1: made a big mistake. It was like Dad's back on
Speaker 1: the job in the office game. I frammed them this time, Yes,
Speaker 1: absolutely so. Then it was four studio albums before we
Speaker 1: did Comes Alive, you know, and a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of touring and where are you living then? You
Speaker 1: still I was still living in England until seventy five,
Speaker 1: and I finished the fourth solo record in England and
Speaker 1: then moved over. I actually moved to New York and
Speaker 1: stayed at the Mount Kisco Holiday Inn on New Year's Eve. Yes,
Speaker 1: So basically the first day of seventy five was I
Speaker 1: was now living in America. When you do comes Alive,
Speaker 1: how much of the music on that is new music
Speaker 1: on an album? How much of it was stuff you
Speaker 1: mind from the previous four solo albums. It was basically
Speaker 1: all stuff that came from the four studio albums. And
Speaker 1: rock On from shine On was a humble Pie track
Speaker 1: that I had written. It was actually from five albums,
Speaker 1: So it's like six years worth of work mining that
Speaker 1: went into that one live record. And for people who
Speaker 1: don't know that live performance was recorded in multiple locations,
Speaker 1: are in one. Most of it was one location, which
Speaker 1: was winter Land in Sanrancisco, Bill Graham gig where The
Speaker 1: Last Wars was filmed. Two nights before, we'd played the
Speaker 1: Marine Civic Center, and we've done two shows there, so
Speaker 1: we recorded that. I think a couple of numbers came
Speaker 1: from there, do WI I think comes from there, maybe
Speaker 1: one of the acoustic songs. But winter Land was the
Speaker 1: first big headline show we'd ever done, I'd ever done
Speaker 1: with my name on the ticket people were coming to
Speaker 1: see me for because the album right prior to Comes
Speaker 1: a Live Just Trampton was the biggest one so far,
Speaker 1: biggest seller they had done, sold like three hundred thousand copies,
Speaker 1: which was mega for me. That was better than all
Speaker 1: the other things in that four album run. Prior to
Speaker 1: the live album in winter Land, things were getting better
Speaker 1: than that, they were, but that one was definitely setting
Speaker 1: me up. It was setting me up for something. Peter
Speaker 1: Frampton Alec Baldwin has interviewed a lot of rock legends
Speaker 1: over the years on Here's the Thing, and you can
Speaker 1: listen to all of them on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. After the break,
Speaker 1: Peter Frampton talks to Alec about the making of Frampton
Speaker 1: Comes Alive, one of the best selling live albums in history.
Speaker 1: I'm Kathleen Russo and this is Here's the Thing. Frampton
Speaker 1: Comes Alive has sold over eleven million copies worldwide. It's
Speaker 1: a double album pulled from three venues, including winter Land
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. Okay, so let's cut the bullshit. Let's
Speaker 1: cut the bullshit. You're in winter Land and would you
Speaker 1: say and the show goes on what time eight o'clock,
Speaker 1: nine o'clock, nine o'clock, probably somewhere between. You pull up
Speaker 1: to Winterland and you go out of quarter to nine.
Speaker 1: The devil came in your room and made a deal
Speaker 1: with you. Correct, you signed a deal with absolutely. The
Speaker 1: devil showed up, poured himself a drink, sat down, said Peter. Peter, Peter, Peter.
Speaker 1: Let's cut. Let's cut. It was Peter Cook. Actually it
Speaker 1: was Peter Cook and he and the devil makes this
Speaker 1: deal with you. Because what happened. First of all, there's
Speaker 1: probably if I'm not mistaken, if there wasn't sent people
Speaker 1: out there, then I thought there were set But it's
Speaker 1: it definitely sounds like it. It's a big room. They
Speaker 1: go nuts when we walk out, and it just takes
Speaker 1: you to a different level. You know. It felt good.
Speaker 1: It was one of those shows when you come off
Speaker 1: and you look at the band and you just go,
Speaker 1: I wish we'd recorded that. That was like so good man.
Speaker 1: And then we went, oh, we did you know we
Speaker 1: did recall that? We forgot we were do you see?
Speaker 1: The event was so much more important than the recording.
Speaker 1: I don't even remember the truck being there. The recording
Speaker 1: is June of five minutes, released when we're still mixing,
Speaker 1: right up before Christmas, and then it comes out, I believe,
Speaker 1: on like January seventeenth or something like that, seventh, January
Speaker 1: nine or what happens. Well, I knew we were going
Speaker 1: to tour the whole year, so right after Christmas, I
Speaker 1: went down to the Bahamas for ten days and relaxed.
Speaker 1: Before I left, we had put one show on at
Speaker 1: Cobo Hall in Detroit, which is a big rum and
Speaker 1: that's all I knew. And so I go away and
Speaker 1: I don't call anybody. I'm just on the beach and
Speaker 1: snorkeling or whatever. I come back. We've sold four shows out,
Speaker 1: and I said, what happened, you know? And the album
Speaker 1: has just started to be on the radio, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's when everything just went went through the roof,
Speaker 1: you know, after all this time. People think it is overnight,
Speaker 1: but it's not overnight in the scheme of things. But
Speaker 1: but yes, but it's not overnight success, but it is.
Speaker 1: It's a heady experience. Is just still the highest selling
Speaker 1: live album of all time. It's in dispute, yeah, but
Speaker 1: up there, yeah, because my record is only counted as
Speaker 1: one one album. Certain other artists had it made so
Speaker 1: that you could count, um, if you released six CD
Speaker 1: live set, you can count it six times. Well, they
Speaker 1: didn't do that retroactively, so in my mind it's still
Speaker 1: the biggest selling. It was almost unbelievable the amount of success.
Speaker 1: You get these phone calls in quick succession. Your number
Speaker 1: one in in the charts, you know, and I'm going,
Speaker 1: wait a second, say that one more time, and who
Speaker 1: are you? And then within three or four weeks of that,
Speaker 1: I get the call saying it's the biggest selling record
Speaker 1: of all time. You've just outsold Carol King's Tapestry and
Speaker 1: it's um. Was that the time you thought of you
Speaker 1: had to start them in yourself? Yeah, it was crazy
Speaker 1: because people just wanted to No, it was very don't
Speaker 1: know how to deal with how people treat you differently exactly,
Speaker 1: and being always being respectful, and and never really thinking
Speaker 1: of myself as anything special because I've never been a
Speaker 1: that's just not my character. I felt embarrassed that I
Speaker 1: was that this entity became it was me over here,
Speaker 1: you know. Yes, it was very hard to deal with.
Speaker 1: But were you proud of the record? Oh my god, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when something really big hits in the entertainment business, it's
Speaker 1: like feast or famine. It's either it's not a hit, movie, record, whatever,
Speaker 1: and nothing comes in, or it's like a blockbuster and
Speaker 1: all this money comes in and it all comes into
Speaker 1: one place. And when you see a pile of money
Speaker 1: like this, it brings out thoughts that people didn't normally
Speaker 1: have before. You know what I mean, it's the the
Speaker 1: availability of all that cash all at once. You know that. Well,
Speaker 1: especially in the music business, because nothing like the music
Speaker 1: business for making money except for the fact that music
Speaker 1: is free. Now well it's it is different now, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean you used to tour to promote the record.
Speaker 1: Now you make the record to promote the tour. The
Speaker 1: record is a giveaway, the c D is a giveaway.
Speaker 1: The dollar you're on the live performing, Yes, that's how
Speaker 1: it is for you. Well, yeah, that's all that's artists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and luckily my reputation is as a live performer. So
Speaker 1: it's been phenomenal for me. But it's hard work touring,
Speaker 1: but I love it, so that's not hard work for me.
Speaker 1: You came into New York recently and you did that
Speaker 1: at the Beacon here, in New York? Yes, how many
Speaker 1: shows did you do? For most of thirteen months, we
Speaker 1: were doing five shows a week and it's a three
Speaker 1: hour show. So we were doing Comes Alive first, which
Speaker 1: is an hour and forty, and then we were doing
Speaker 1: excerpts from everything else in my career as well for
Speaker 1: another hour and fifteen or twenty, you know, So it
Speaker 1: was we were killing ourselves. How did it feel? Well?
Speaker 1: It felt great. The place one nuts you know, they
Speaker 1: just went't berserved. You know you're gonna do it again.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether I'll do the entire thing again,
Speaker 1: Comes Alive again? Not for a while anyway, damn it. No, No,
Speaker 1: you've we filmed it and filmed it, yeah, at the
Speaker 1: Beacon and in what are you do with that? Where
Speaker 1: is that? Guy? It's gonna be a DVD. In fact,
Speaker 1: that's where I'm going on Sunday to go back home
Speaker 1: to my studio to mix the audio. What are you
Speaker 1: gonna do when you're gonna release it as a dis
Speaker 1: is a DVD? Now? Probably just be a DVD. And
Speaker 1: I don't want to do this on TV. Oh i'd
Speaker 1: love to. Yeah, have you got an in there? Maybe? Oh?
Speaker 1: I can't believe if it's a doctor. Are there any
Speaker 1: backstage footage? I've got the story and it's filmed of
Speaker 1: when my guitar was returned. What happened to that guitar?
Speaker 1: What's the story? Well, um, first of all, we're talking
Speaker 1: about the guitar that's on the front cover of Comes Alive,
Speaker 1: which I got given to me by Mark Mariana in
Speaker 1: seventy when I was playing the film or West with
Speaker 1: Humble Pie, and I was having a terrible time with
Speaker 1: the guitar that I had at that that night, and
Speaker 1: Mark said to me, you know, I could see you
Speaker 1: having problems with that. You want to try my Les
Speaker 1: Paul Tomorrow. I said, well, I'm not really big on
Speaker 1: let's pause, but okay, all right, anything is better than this.
Speaker 1: So he brought it to me. I played it. I
Speaker 1: don't think my feet touched the ground the entire That's
Speaker 1: the best guitar I've ever played. So then I played
Speaker 1: that guitar on Rock On and also a Humble Pie
Speaker 1: and also Rock in the film on. That's the guitar
Speaker 1: I use on there. Basically I used that exclusively. It's
Speaker 1: the only guitar I play all the way through all
Speaker 1: my solo records and including Frampton Comes Alive and you
Speaker 1: were never attempted to put that down, and that was it.
Speaker 1: That was, yes, yes, it was just this one. I
Speaker 1: had a fifty five strap that I would always use
Speaker 1: for Show Me the Way because I needed a cleaner sound,
Speaker 1: you know. So that was that was on Show Me
Speaker 1: the Way. So then we get to touring South America.
Speaker 1: We just finished playing Caracas, Venezuela and we had a
Speaker 1: day off, and so we flew commercially to Panama waiting
Speaker 1: for the gear to arrive on a cargo plane. While
Speaker 1: it never got off the runway in Caracas, it crashed
Speaker 1: on take off. My road manager came to me, I'm
Speaker 1: having this huge meal on my day off with my
Speaker 1: wife at the time, and he said, I got some
Speaker 1: bad news and he says, the plane crashed on takeoff.
Speaker 1: I said, my guitar, he said, and like six people
Speaker 1: loading people, the pilot, co pilot, loading, inspector, all that.
Speaker 1: So I mean, yeah, people died. So that took precedent
Speaker 1: over everything. Then it put it in perspective, you know,
Speaker 1: and there's the pilot's wife sitting at the bar who
Speaker 1: doesn't know yet. It was horrendous. So anyway, we limped
Speaker 1: through the end of that tour basically with borrowed equipment.
Speaker 1: Sent someone down my guitar tech at the time a
Speaker 1: week later to see what was left. Nothing was left, supposedly,
Speaker 1: and what had happened. The tail had broken off. Guitars
Speaker 1: were actually in a trunks in cases. And the way
Speaker 1: the story goes is they had a god to guard
Speaker 1: the crash side, the debris side. Util the insurance people
Speaker 1: came down and he decided that the guitars would be
Speaker 1: much safer at his house. Yes, and then Caracas. Yes.
Speaker 1: In Caracas two years ago, which is thirty years thirty
Speaker 1: years later, I opened my info at Frampton dot com
Speaker 1: email because anybody can email me and I see them all.
Speaker 1: I opened up this one and there's a picture of
Speaker 1: photograph of my guitar slightly singed but but it's my
Speaker 1: lastly right at the top, you know, slightly singed, but
Speaker 1: but there it is. There's a picture, and I thought,
Speaker 1: could this picture where in an email to me from
Speaker 1: someone who would got ahold of the guitar. As it
Speaker 1: happens in Kurasau, which is a little island off the
Speaker 1: coast of Caracas, someone had sold it to this gentleman,
Speaker 1: and he took it to someone who fixed guitars and
Speaker 1: they knew what it was. And it took two years
Speaker 1: of a very gray area and was he saying like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get proceed. I want to get
Speaker 1: this guitariti, but I want to go to jail. That
Speaker 1: was the thing. No one wanted to actually come money.
Speaker 1: It wasn't about he wanted to There was money involved,
Speaker 1: but he would have appreciated a gratuity. There was a
Speaker 1: reward talked about, but every time it would get close
Speaker 1: to someone coming in, they'd find something reason why they
Speaker 1: couldn't come in. So that's why it took two years.
Speaker 1: And then in the end the guy actually checked to
Speaker 1: see if we had booked him a hotel because he
Speaker 1: just saw himself in handcuffs at Miami Airport. You know,
Speaker 1: he knew who had it, and the person who had
Speaker 1: it needed some money, and so he went to the
Speaker 1: tourist Bureau of Kurasau and said, look, if you and
Speaker 1: me the money or give me the money to go
Speaker 1: by this, I can find this. This is really great
Speaker 1: tourism story for Curasao. And and they did, and they
Speaker 1: came and the two of them, the tourism president of
Speaker 1: the tourism board from the government, and the gentleman who
Speaker 1: found the guitar, knew where it was, brought it to Nashville.
Speaker 1: We had three cameras as soon as he waited in waiting,
Speaker 1: and what happens while the two gentlemen walk in and
Speaker 1: he's got it in this probably one of the worst
Speaker 1: looking gigbags I've ever seen in my life, cheap, old
Speaker 1: plastic thing. He puts it beside him, you know, and
Speaker 1: he tells the story in broken English of how this
Speaker 1: person had it and the whole thing. He hands it
Speaker 1: to me and he goes Philip to Peter Philip so
Speaker 1: and I know that he knows because it was the
Speaker 1: lightest les Paul I'd ever played. So I just felt
Speaker 1: it in the case and who this could be it?
Speaker 1: You know, opened it up. I just looked at it
Speaker 1: and I just feel it like that, and I go,
Speaker 1: it's my guitar. How bad they was? It singed where
Speaker 1: just round the very top it lost the binding around
Speaker 1: the headstock. Did you get that replaced? No? I didn't.
Speaker 1: I left it. I've left it with its battle scars.
Speaker 1: Gibson made it playable so we re friended the Caracas
Speaker 1: kiss and there is this sound the same. Does it
Speaker 1: feel the same. Yeah, And when I first played it
Speaker 1: at rehearsals with the band, everybody had this like cheshire
Speaker 1: cat grin on their face because it has the sound
Speaker 1: and it sounds like Frampton comes alive. You know, you
Speaker 1: don't have to try too hard. And you got that
Speaker 1: back when I got it back just before we started
Speaker 1: touring in February and March for the last American leg,
Speaker 1: I used it a little bit at rehearsals, and then
Speaker 1: I brought it out for the first night at the Beacon.
Speaker 1: I think the guitar is more famous than I am
Speaker 1: now rock legend Peter Frampton. I'm Kathleen Russo. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to my first attempt at hosting Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing is brought to you by our Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Carrie Donohue, Zach McNeice and yours truly
Speaker 1: our engineers. Frank Imperial. Alec is back next week talking
Speaker 1: with an amazing politician, California Democratic Assemblywoman Lorraina Gonzalez